BELGRADE, Apr. 24 – One year ago this weekend, on Apr. 23,
1999, right after the TiM editor had returned home to Arizona from the
bombed out Belgrade, NATO committed the “mother of all crimes” when it
comes to injury to truth and liberty.This unholy alliance that claimed to stand for freedom and
democracy bombed the Serb TV studio in downtown Belgrade, killing scores
of technical and administrative staff.

“TiM Ed.: It
tragically fitting that NATO, formed as a defensive organization 50 years
ago to the day, should mark its anniversary with an attack on freedom of
speech as well as on innocent civilians in Belgrade. Now that all masks of
civility have fallen, everybody can see the new NATO for what it is - a
mass murdering New World Order juggernaut, or a North Atlantic Terrorist
Organization, as some Belgrade protest posters have depicted it.”

Well, today, one year later, this writer walked over to the site of
this heinous crime.A bronze
plaque with gold-plated names of the victims etched on it marks the
entrance to the newly rebuilt Serb TV studio building.Underneath the plaque, laid on a concrete ledge, four urns with
fresh flowers added to a feeling that one was standing in front of a
shrine, a new “wailing wall” perhaps for the truth-loving journalists
around the world.

Two young girls, probably in their late teens, stood in front of me and
the plaque, silently reading the names of the victims.Fearing that I may not remember them all, I snapped a
picture.

“No pictures!” a man who looked like a civilian security guard
said, waving his arms animatingly as he stepped out of the building.

“Too late,” I thought, putting my camera away without saying a
word.

“Why not?” one of the girls asked the guard innocently.She never got an answer.The
guard looked too bored to do it, probably sensing himself the
ludicrousness of the rule.

(During the war, some of the guards at the various Serb media outfits
were also very hyper about the sight of cameras in and around their
buildings.Given that such
civilian targets eventually became free game for NATO’s target practice,
the guards’ zealousness can perhaps be understood.But getting excited now, one year later, when someone takes a
picture of a plaque, is a symptom of paranoia, reminiscent of the old Tito
communist days.It could also be a sign of a siege mentality that is
besieging the Milosevic regime).

I climbed up a small hill back of the TV building, and took some more
pictures of the new and the old (ruins) Serb TV building from the high
grounds of the Tasmajdan Park, as well as from the nearby children’s
theater.

Right next door to the theater is a small Russian church, dwarfed by
the gigantic Sveti Marko (St. Marco) Serbian Orthodox cathedral, just to
the south of it.But faithful
Christians should not get fooled by the size of the dwellings in which
people worship.

When this writer was a young man, spending a part of his youth in this
Belgrade neighborhood, the small Russian church always seemed somehow
closer to God than the huge Serbian cathedral.Perhaps that’s because every Easter (and this is the Orthodox
Christian Easter week, with Easter Sunday falling on Apr. 30), despite the
communist rule, there was a Russian choir that performed beautiful
Orthodox church music at this time of the year.The Russian church being as tiny as it is, we, the neighborhood
kids as well as other Belgrade residents, used to sit on the Tasmajdan
Park grass above the church enjoying, what we thought was, a free concert.

There was no music today.Not
even church bells.In fact,
the doors to the Russian church were locked.So this writer walked over to the St. Marco cathedral next door,
whose doors have always been open.Even
during the communist rule.It’s
just that not many people ventured in those days.

I felt like saying, “thank you, NATO.” Instead, I said my prayers,
kissed the icons, gave a donation to the church, and lit a large candle
for the souls of the slain journalists.

Ironically, as I crossed the Aleksandrova Street (the former Boulevard
of the Revolution - by the way, just about all major Belgrade streets have
now been renamed to the old, pre-communist era names; ‘twas about
time!), I noted the Czech tricolor fluttering in front of the Czech
Republic embassy in which Madeleine Albright spent some of her childhood.
Her Dad, Mr. Korbel, an avowed Serbophile till his death, was back then a
Czech ambassador to Yugoslavia (see “Da
Bull”).

Yet, 50+ years later, here was Madlenka Korbel a.k.a. Madam Halfbright,
waging war on TV stations of her fellow-Slavs, who sheltered her and her
Jewish family from the pogroms.Her
Dad is surely turning in his grave.Furiously.

Walk
along the Embassy Row

After an interlude for some business meetings, I continued the trip
down the memory lane, retracing my steps from last April, when I walked
along the Belgrade’s “Embassy Row,” the Kneza Milosa street, taking
pictures of the then defaced NATO countries’ embassy buildings.

Today, only one embassy’s facade remained defaced.In fact, it looked worse than it was a year ago, with some
new expletives added since that time.It is the embassy of the United States of America (stand by for
some “then and now” comparison photos when we get a chance to post
them at our Web site).

What was once the largest diplomatic post in Belgrade, now looks like
an empty shell, a dwelling as decrepit as any abandoned Bronx tenement
building.Its hollow innards
symbolized the New World Order, and emitted the “Sunset
of the West, Sunrise of the East” tune, overpowering even the Kneza
Milosa street traffic noise.

Diagonally across the street from the former U.S. diplomatic mission,
however, the Canadian embassy looked spick and span.All wartime graffiti have been cleaned up.All broken windows have been repaired.Ditto re. the nearby German embassy.

But looks can be deceiving.Moral
blemishes on these and other NATO governments, all Washington’s
quislings, may take decades to wash off, if at all.The sooner they start repenting, however, the better.The cleanly scrubbed facades of the Canadian and German embassies
suggest that the governments of at least some NATO countries are getting
that message.

Kneza
Milosa Friends

After an unseasonably warm week, in which the temperatures sometimes
exceeded 28C (81F - such as today), gray clouds started to gather from the
West this evening, just as this writer was finishing his photo-inspection
of the Belgrade Embassy Row.It
was high time to grab a taxi and run for home.

But after unsuccessfully trying to flag down a cab during the busy
Belgrade rush hour, suddenly a whole row of cars stopped right in front
me, honking their horns, and otherwise behaving as if a car in front of
them had a green light, but wasn’t moving.Finally, I looked back, only to recognize an old friend, whom I had
just seen earlier in the day, too, and who was now running toward me.He had evidently noticed that I was stuck for a ride, stopped
his car, got out of it, and ran toward me, signaling me to jump in.I did.

“It was God’s will, I suppose, that we shall meet again the same
day, after not seeing each other for so long,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said, laughing and nodding in agreement.

As my friend drove me back to my hotel, I recalled with an eerie sense
of divine intervention an incident that took place one year ago at exactly
the same part of the Kneza Milosa street, except in the opposite traffic
lanes.Here’s an excerpt
(see Day 68,
Item 2):

“When this
writer visited Serbia in late April, he had a similar experience, though
with a happier ending.One of
the three highway bridges near Novi Sad was still standing at the time. As
we approached it after a brief stopover in downtown Novi Sad, the driver
crossed himself, and asked everyone in the van to say a prayer. Then he
gunned the vehicle across the bridge.

Half way across
Europe's longest waterway, his eyes glued on the roadway ahead, "De
Gaulle," the nickname which the driver, a tall wiry Serb, earned forhaving lived a few years in Paris, motioned to the right.
"This is where the missile hit," he said.

Indeed, the damage
was extensive and obvious, though the bridge was still standing. Back
then. It no longer is. A couple of weeks later, NATO came back and
finished the job.

No wonder many
taxi drivers in Belgrade have crosses hanging under their rear view
mirrors, having to cross the bridges across the rivers Sava and Danube
numerous times every day. Only under the crosses, of course.

Incidentally,
"DeGaulle" almost caused an accident a few days later right at
the Kneza Milosa exit off the Gazela bridge in downtown Belgrade.As this writer was walking along Kneza Milosa street to take
pictures of the bombed-out Interior Ministry buildings (see the photos at
our Web site - http://www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/photos-rsd.html), a van
suddenly came to a screeching halt on one of Belgrade's busiest streets.
Several other vehicles behind the van also hit the breaks. But it was the
van's driver, and not those behind him, who kept honking his horn more
frantically than a Manhattan cabbie might during a presidential visit (see
"Taking a Little Bite Out of the Big Apple").

When I finally
looked up to see what all the kaffafle was about, I recognized "DeGaulle,"
my Budapest to Belgrade driver from a few days earlier. "DeGaulle"
seemed so happy to see me again, that he jumped right out of the van, ran
across to the sidewalk to give me a big hug. After I returned the hug, he
ran back to his vehicle.”

Ever seen an Intercontinental Taxi?I have.Today, April
24, in Belgrade.He was black
with brown whiskers.He was
warm and cuddly.He was
loveable and huggable.And he
was stretched out on the rug at the entrance of Belgrade’s arguably best
hotel, which has recently also acquired an unfortunate notoriety as the
place where Arkan (Zeljko Raznjatovic) and two of his body guards were
murdered last January.

“Whose dog is this?” I asked the friendly staff at the reception.

“I have no idea.He just
appeared one day.”

“He just appeared one day?”

“Yes.Along with other
dogs, too.”

“With other dogs, too?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When the bombing started.”

“What happened then?”

“Guess the dogs got scared.They
can sense danger, you know, before we the humans, can (for proof of it,
see “Man’s
Best Friend Proved His Worth as Dog of War”).And so, during the air raids, we the hotel staff, would go out into
the parking lot to wait out the danger.And all these dogs came out of nowhere to join us.Guess they felt safer being with a ‘man friend?’Anyway, some of them stayed to this day.”

“Does this one, at the front, have a name?”

“Yes.We call him
‘Taxi.’”

“Taxi?”

“Yes.”

“So this is your Intercontinental Taxi?” I joked.

Everybody laughed.

“And who feeds him?”

“We do.The staff.”

Well, no wonder Taxi looked so happy and contented sprawled on the
Intercontinental’s rug.All
fun, no work.

I didn’t have the heart to explain to the kind hotel staff the
meaning of taxidermy, though.Hope
they never get to learn it while taking care of their Intercontinental
Taxi.

BELGRADE, Apr. 30 - After receiving gratifying feedback from
some TiM readers about the above Taxi and other stories, and a request
from one young lady from Ohio who said she wanted to see what this dog
looked like, the TiM editor obliged, taking several photos of him on Good
Friday (they will be posted as soon as they are developed and
scanned).

In the process of doing it, however, and talking about the stray dogs
with the hotel staff, the TiM editor discovered a darker side of the
story. In fact, parts of it are quite gruesome. But we'll let
you follow it through the following dialogue between that Ohio reader and
the TiM editor in Belgrade:

Ohio Reader:
Did you see Taxi today?

TiM Editor:
Yes, I did see Taxi and, thanks to your idea, I took several pictures.There are also a couple of tiny baby dogs, a black and a gray pup,
that live under a concrete block in front of the hotel. I took pictures
of them, too, playing with my camera case.

Ohio Reader:
How cute! Thanks for doing that.

TiM Editor:
But there is a sad story about the dogs in Belgrade these days. Many
people who live in the nearby apartment buildings cannot afford to feed
them. So they just let them loose in the parks or streets. Ultimately,
many end up being put to sleep in the pounds after the dog catchers collect
them, according to the hotel staff.

Ohio Reader:
That's too sad... But I guess it is a harsh reality of war and poverty

TiM Editor:
True. But it gets worse.Some
of the people (guests? or cleaning staff?) around the hotel didn't like
their barking at the birds and cars, so they poisoned some of them (with
food, I suppose?).The
granny of those two pups ended up that way, I was told.

Ohio Reader:
That's terrible!!! How can they get away with that?

Ohio Reader:
You don't suppose there's any way of you bringing some of them with you
to Ohio?

TiM Editor:
No, there is no way. You probably know how fussy the customs
officials are with animal diseases etc.

TiM Editor:
By the way, even Taxi had been poisoned a while back. But being a
tough dog he survived. "He kept eating nothing but grass for about
a week," one of the doormen told me.

Ohio Reader:
I know, but I feel badly having those poor dogs suffering like that.

TiM Editor:
Well, that's only a reflection of how people are suffering first, being
forced to abandon their animals. So having read our wartime reports, you
can now perhaps better understand how NATO was not only waging war
against Serb civilians, but against LIFE in general!That's not only genocide in human terms.That's worse than that.

Ohio Reader:
I understand.

TiM Editor:
You should also check out some of the stories about the animals of the
Belgrade zoo being traumatized and even aborting their unborn offspring
during the bombing (see "Beasts'
War on Beasts").

Ohio Reader:
Again, I understand. But I still don't like it... Maybe those
people who kill the doggies should be poisoned, too?

TiM Editor:
I understand how you feel. But that's not likely. At least not in
this world... They kill dogs in the U.S. pounds, too. Only perhaps
more humanely. Which is an oxymoron ("humanely"), of
course, for an act of killing.

The
Storm from the West

“Going for a quick jog before the rain comes,” I waived to the
hotel staff, as I walked out the door a few minutes later.

“Rain?What rain?”
asked a hotel reception clerk.

“Trust an Arizona nose when it comes to rain.We get so little of it that we can smell it from miles
away.”

About half an hour later, as the first drops of rain fell on the
parched Belgrade ground from the stormy sky, I marched into the hotel
lobby, slightly out of breath, but still mostly dry.

“What did I tell you?” I said to the staff grinning, while taking
my (now superfluous) sun glasses off, and drying them off with my T-shirt.

It didn’t take long before a few drops of rain turned into a
full-fledged thunderstorm.As
the bolts of lightening struck downtown Belgrade, and the roar of the thunder shook
the building, I was reminded of another storm, a year ago, which the
residents of the Serb capital cheered.Because it saved lives.

Here’s an excerpt from a TiM Bulletin filed from the same hotel a
year ago, right after the Pancevo chemical factory was struck by NATO,
releasing a huge toxic cloud (see “Angry
Skies over Serbia”):

“Last night's
attack against a Pancevo chemical factory was a case in point (see above).
The NATO bombs caused huge fires which released toxic fumes into the
atmosphere.This afternoon,
as your editor returned to Belgrade, a plume of black smoke was visible
from 50 miles away. And even now, at about 3PM GMT, the black toxic cloud
is clearly visible over the northeastern Belgrade suburbs from this
writer's hotel.

For your
information, Pancevo is about as close to downtown Belgrade as Central
Park is to the World Trade Towers in New York. […]

TiM Ed.: And the
people who committed this crime, not only against humanity, but against
nature - Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder,
Madeleine Albright, Sam Berger, William Cohen, Wesley Clark, and other
NATO leaders, have the nerve to talk about "genocide?"

As if echoing our
condemnation, a powerful thunderstorm is rolling right now over Belgrade.
Fortunately, the wind is from the southwest, thus driving the toxic cloud
away from the city. What NATO has attempted to do, God is evidently
undoing.”

Thank you, God, for giving the TiM editor a chance to write this
Bulletin one year later.And
happy Easter 2000 to all earthlings opposed to tyranny and crimes against
humanity and life in general, such as was the murder committed 2000 years
ago, on Good Friday!

If he could speak, I am sure that even the Intercontinental Taxi would
second this.Instead, please
accept his lazy, docile stretch on the hotel rug as a sign that life is
still winning over the Evil Empire of the New World Order.

P.S. In a more down-to-earth example of God’s revenge, one year ago,
getting gasoline in Belgrade was like pulling hens’ teeth.Now (thanks to the Russians?), most gas stations are well
stocked up.More importantly,
at about 18 dinars per liter (about DM 0.80, $0.53 per liter), petrol is
now cheaper in Serbia than in most of the western NWO vassal countries.Such as in Hungary, for example, where it is about DM 1.20, $0.80
per liter.Or in Austria,
where it is DM 1.40, $0.93 per liter).

So after almost nine years of genocidal western sanctions against
Serbia, guess what countries’ citizens are flocking into Serbia to buy
cheaper fuel and smuggle it across the border?The western NATO quislings, of course.

Is it the Slavic version of the “Montezuma revenge?” Lucky for them, most western Euros, like the
"Gringos" in Mexico, won’t even know what that is. Until
it hits them... J